Convert Linux manual man page to text file.

Convert Linux man page
to text file in Linux and Windows

Sometimes
after we view the man pages in Linux and then we want to copy or
bring the man pages and view on other operating system, as example
we want to view the Linux man pages on Windows operating system.
The easier way to do this is to copy the man pages or convert the
Linux man pages to text file. The command below show how to
convert Linux man pages to text file.

[root@fedora ~]# man
arch | col -bx >arch.txt

[root@fedora ~]#

Command Explanation:

To display the man in
text file format using cat command in Linux:

[root@localhost ~]#
cat arch.txt

[root@localhost ~]#

To open the Linux manual
in text file format in Windows, just use the WordPad :

1 comment

I have, so far, only used it to convert one man page, exiv2, to text, and I was, admittedly, not using a Fedora-core Linux to make the conversion. The output text file displayed without the familiar, and undoubtedly important, hyphens preceding lower-case letters in the man page's Options list. I've looked over this output text file and compared it both with the manual in my terminal emulator as well as one or two HTML versions on the Web, and so far, this is the only flaw I can observe.

O'Reilly's man page on the col(umn) command suggests leaving out the -x option when converting man pages to some other format such as .print. As the -x option merely suppresses conversion of "sequences of spaces to tabs," I can't see where it would make that great a difference. Still, it may be worth trying for those using, as well as not using, a Fedora Linux.

Nonetheless, I thought it should be noted that the text file of a man page without punctuation in certain crucial places may be a possible outcome of using the above command.